Oh the Humanity!

The new Forgotten is up, which is more than can be said for Peter Finch’s silly old airship. Head on over to the Auteurs’ Notebook to read all about it, and please leave your comments there.

The Dirty Half-Dozen

Roger Corman’s THE SECRET INVASION is a clear fore-runner of Aldrich’s DIRTY DOZEN, dealing as it does with a crack elite squad of crack elite rogue maverick criminals on a top secret utmost importance type mission. For once working for a major studio (well, United Artists), Corman unfortunately wasn’t able to stress the cynical aspects that would make such a story most effective and original. (The best film of this type, and maybe the only really good one, is Andre de Toth’s PLAY DIRTY.)

Corman’s original title was THE DUBIOUS PATRIOTS, which I find endearingly weak. I suggest THE QUESTIONABLE HEROES and THE INSIPID MARTYRS as decent alternatives. Or maybe THE INGLOURIOUS SCAMPS.

The flick played at Edinburgh Film Fest’s Corman retro, and was introduced by Niall Fullton, who told how Corman conceived the story at the dentist — reading an article about the WWII battle of Dubrovnik, he dreamed up a war movie plot to distract him from the dentist’s uncomfortable ministrations (think LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS). UA money and Yugoslavian locations (with the partial cooperation of the local armed forces) enabled him to make his biggest film to date.

It’s enjoyable, but still has a somewhat cheap quality. Corman doesn’t pay that much attention to performance (the extras in particular are troublesome — there’s always one guy spoiling the mood by running into battle in a spazzy way, or pulling a strange expression during a crowd reaction shot) — and the production design isn’t fully up to the period movie challenge. The TV aerials on the rooftops didn’t bother me much, but the Nazi officer’s desk calendar for some reason seemed hilarious. It reads “1943:” That may be the funniest colon in film history.

When I wasn’t chuckling at the punctuation, I appreciated the deft use of stock footage (“Cairo” proclaims a proudly superimposed title, and it is Cairo) which Corman intercuts with the main characters’ introductions in a snappy way that actually achieves a sort of Oliver Stone liveliness, the different film stocks playing off each other. The day-for-night wasn’t so hot: underexposed evening shots set up a reasonably convincing facsimile of dusk, but then it becomes broad daylight for ten minutes before returning to dusk all of a sudden.

Rooney, Byrnes, Campbell. The Dirty Trio.

Our heroes are –

MAJOR RICHARD MACE — Stewart Granger, boldly doing his own stunts and trying to steal other actors’ lines, causing a rare delay on a Corman shoot. Granger gives a horrible perf as the disgraced officer assigned to a suicide mission — everything is completely obvious and on-the-nose, which is especially problematic in a script as un-nuanced as this one. He’s not the most graceful actor either. The film is full of scenes where soldiers fail to take cover when they easily could, or run crouching behind low walls with their heads and shoulders sticking up into plain view.

ROBERT ROCCA – ORGANIZER — Raf Vallone gives the only really authoritative perf, nailing every line and exuding machismo and intelligence. His Rocca has degrees in psychology, Greek classics and structural engineering (Corman shares the latter qualification), none of which play any role in the story. But he is the guy who devises an escape plan in which all of the gang snap their fingers to maintain split-second timing in the absence of watches to synchronize. Of course, none of the actors snap at the same rate, and it turns out the timing was only relevant to allow them to all meet up in a corridor at approximately the same time. Still, nice thought.

TERENCE SCANLON – DEMOLITION — Mickey Rooney tests his well-known versatility by taking on the role of a feared IRA leprechaun. With the same dauntless courage he displayed as Mr. Yunioshi in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S — you can keep your Mifunes and Shimuras — he boldly plays the stage Oirish dialogue in an unmoderated American accent. But, one has to admit that his dancing training makes him a nimble and eye-catching physical player. He’s ridiculous, but with rare panache.

SIMON FELL – FORGER — Edd Byrnes is the handsome one, so it’s a surprising pleasure to see him die first. He essays the most histrionic, James Dean-like death, which is fine (Granger pulls off one of those nice life-leaving-the-eyes jobs in a pastoral setting). I was baffled by why the needed a forger, but they actually find stuff for him to do, stamping important Nazi documents with an artfully honed potato, and the like.

JOHN  DURRELL – ASSASSIN — Henry Silva once killed a man using only his cheekbones. And maimed a dog with his eyes. He’s well cast. “Of no known nationality,” Durrell is on death row for doing in his mistress. Nice to see that the professional hitman finds time for some pro bono work, I suppose. Silva gives a rubbish performance which, weirdly, isn’t quite inexpressive enough. And his romantic interest (!) is Spela Rozin, who projects even less emotion and seems more cold-blooded. Her credit, “And Introducing” practically guarantees her a lifetime of obscurity.

JEAN SAVAL – KNOWN AS “THE MASTER OF DISGUISE” — William Campbell is a very good too, a natural type with a great face and delivery. But unlikely casting as a man who can morph into anybody else, since he’s so distinctive-looking. A nice goofy moment is when he examines an unconscious Nazi guard so as to effect a transformation. “The key is the expression,” he intones. The expression of an unconscious man? Even if he can pull this off, aren’t the other Nazis going to wonder, “What’s Horst doing walking about unconscious on guard duty?” Campbell also does vocal impressions, by the simple method of being dubbed by whomever he choses to impersonate. It’s a handy skill!

Meet the Smiths

MR AND MRS SMITH — dispel all thoughts of Brangelina, that two-headed monster, for this is Hitchcock’s first American comedy, made at RKO on loan-out from Selznick, as a favour to Carole Lombard, with whom he’d wanted to work for some time. She’s one of the Hollywood star Hitch wrote about while still in England, and when he move to LA she became, essentially, his landlady for a while.

Where did I read this? –

Hitchcock bumps into Carole Lombard outside the screening room, where he’s just viewed the rushes. She’s come to see them, but she’s late. Hitch assures her that the rushes are fine and she’s good in them.

“Fuck that, how do my new tits look?”

And who, commenting here, pointed out the fascinating deliberate continuity error where Robert Montgomery’s socks change their pattern according to his and Lombard’s emotions?

I always thought that the little guy who brings the bad news, was played by Warner Brothers voice artist Mel Blanc. Maybe when I saw it as a kid, my Dad looked at the guy and said “Elmer Fudd!” It’s not, though, it’s a fellow called Charles Halton. Why did nobody put Blanc in a major movie role?

It’s subtle, but it’s there.

First time I saw the film I liked it fine. Second time I disliked it quite a bit. This time it seemed pretty good to me. I will say that, thanks to our auteurist appreciation of Hitchcock, and his fame, the movie gets a little more attention than it deserves. HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE is a ten-times-better screwball comedy, I’d say, also written by Norman Krasna and starring Lombard, but directed by the less-celebrated Mitchell Leisen, and very few people have seen that compared to SMITHS.

The Smiths, lawyer husband and sexpot wife, who have a tempestuous but successful three-year marriage, learn that the partnership is not strictly legal, due to some convoluted zoning problem, and break up. He (Robert Montgomery) tries to win her back, mainly by acting like a dick. His buddy Jack Carson is useful for audience sympathy purposes, because Carson’s character is an even bigger lout than Montgomery.

Then Montgomery’s other pal, Gene Raymond, starts wooing Carole, which at least gives Montgomery something to be aggrieved about. But instead of making Raymond the heavy, screenwriter Norman Krasna types him as a classic romcom schnook. I always like schnooks. I often like them better than the hero.

Raymond gets the funniest scene, when he’s drunk. Very fine physical work, lurching and sort of bobbing in the air, and a refrain of “Thank you,” which gets more absurd with each repetition. This comes after a disastrous date where the couple get caught in a broken fun-fair ride. This reminds me of the story of Hitch sending his daughter up on a Ferris wheel and tipping the operator to kill the engine and strand her aloft. I wonder what Hitch would have done with a really black comedy, where he could let his sadistic side have free reign?

There are quite a few moments in this film when I had trouble understanding the character motivation. Is Lombard really through with Montgomery, or is she just testing him? At the end, she rejects Gene Raymond because he won’t beat up her “husband,” then allows herself to be trapped in her skis by the guy she wanted beaten, and the movie ends in a rather peculiar bit of play-rape. I could never figure that out.

The movie is extremely elegantly shot, though, with a gliding camera and flying furniture which escapes the path of the dolly with invisible sideways movements. I’d like to say more about this film, but the Edinburgh Film Festival is eating up too much of my time — so over to you!